Professor tells politician: “I pay your salary”

A Texas private university professor didn’t shy away from reminding an Alaskan Republican who paid his salary – the taxpayer.

Rice University professor Douglas Brinkley created a national stir today when he got into a heated verbal exchange with Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska,after testifying about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Young, who supports drilling in ANWR, set off the fiery exchange when he called Brinkley’s testimony “garbage” and then mistakenly called Brinkley “Dr. Rice.”

“It’s Dr. Brinkley. Rice University is a university,” Brinkley said. “I know you went to Yuba (Community) College…”

Young, who is visibly angry in the video of the exchange, shouted back, “I’ll call you anything I want to call you when you’re in that chair. You just be quiet.”

Brinkley, of course, didn’t take those comments lightly or back off.

“You don’t own me,” the professor said. “I pay your salary. I work for the private sector and you work for the taxpayer.”

Committee Chairman Doc Hasting, R-WA, stepped in to break up the heated argument.

Brinkley told Hastings that he felt it was necessary to correct Young after he had mistakenly called him the wrong name and called his testimony garbage.

“You would do that if someone did that to your name,” Brinkley added.

And they didn’t make nice after the meeting either.

Luke Miller, a spokesman for Representative Young, said the fiery exchange was “nothing more than a publicity stunt by Mr. Brinkley in order to sell books.”

“Witnesses are invited to testify before Congress to answer questions and provide insight, not repeatedly interrupt a Committee Chairman and Members of the Committee and be disrespectful,” Miller said in a statement. “People will want to make this into more than what it really is; an attempt by an author to create a stir and sell books.”

Brinkley took his own jab at Young in press. From The Washington Post:

Brinkley was unapologetic when we reached him, calling Young “a crazy zealot for molesting the refuge” and saying he wished he “could have gone mano-a-mano” with him. “I was hoping for the chance to get into a heated debate with him, but, alas, it’s hard in that forum.”